Shabnam

[Shabnam @ShabnamMenon]

If you look to the ‘other side’ n your only response to their thought process/ actions is to call it Fake News, then there IS a problem n YOU are it! Ffs, it’s statistically impossible for any side to be right 100% of the time.. if for nothing else, it’s time to keep an open mind

[Raghavi Rajangam @R_G_Raghavi]

Incase people forgot… 👍🏻

[Shabnam @ShabnamMenon]

@lovindubai Old Deira fish and vegetables market

[Zoom Afrika @zoomafrika1]

Leopold of Belgium ruled Congo as his private property for 23 years. He cut off the limbs of Congolese who did not meet their daily quota on the plantation. At the end of his rule, he had killed 15million Congolese people. But we are taught only about Hitler. 😭😭

[Ang. @AngThaDean]

Y’all hate annoying people more than you hate evil people and that is exactly why the seats of power are held by charismatic demons

[Griffin @6ESinger157593]

India’s Growth Has a Decency Problem

India is rising, and the evidence is visible everywhere. New highways, modern airports, thriving start-ups, digital payments at every corner shop — the country feels ambitious and confident. We speak openly about becoming a $5 trillion economy and a major global power. Much of this progress is real and worth celebrating.

But beneath the growth story lies a quieter decline — one that doesn’t show up in GDP numbers. Everyday decency is eroding.

Take our roads. India records over 1.5 lakh road deaths each year. Infrastructure plays a role, but so does behaviour. Signals are jumped. Lanes are ignored. Horns are used aggressively. Ambulances struggle to pass because no one wants to give way. Driving has become less about shared responsibility and more about individual urgency.

Public spaces tell a similar story. Loud music blares late into residential neighbourhoods. Firecrackers explode in crowded streets without regard for the elderly or sick. In trains and waiting rooms, people play videos on speaker. In restaurants, conversations are conducted at full volume. In cinemas, phones light up mid-film and running commentary disrupts the experience for everyone else.Quiet spaces are no longer treated as shared spaces.

Social gatherings, too, reveal a shift. Guests arrive late without apology. Hosts hover within familiar circles. Strangers stand awkwardly because no one takes the trouble to introduce them. Elders are barely acknowledged. Phones dominate attention. Events may look impressive on social media, but they often feel uncomfortable in person.
The art of making others feel welcome is fading.

Everyday courtesies are weakening in smaller ways as well. Youngsters often do not greet each other or elders. In buses and metros, elderly passengers stand while younger commuters remain seated, absorbed in their screens. Calls go unanswered. Messages are read and ignored. Apologies are rare.

More disturbing are incidents of assaults on uniformed personnel, including off-duty military personnel. Servicemen travelling with their families or stepping in to help during disputes have been attacked. Disagreement with authority is part of democracy. Physical aggression toward those who serve reflects something deeper — a loss of respect for institutions and basic order.

Politics reinforces the pattern. A significant number of elected representatives face serious criminal charges. Campaign promises are made loudly and forgotten quietly. When dishonesty carries little consequence at the top, cynicism spreads below.
What ties all this together is not a lack of intelligence or ambition. It is a culture of impunity and indifference.

On the road: nothing will happen.With noise: people will adjust. In politics: voters will forget. In daily life: it doesn’t matter. Adjustment has become our reflex. We adjust to chaos, to lateness, to broken promises, to public rudeness. But each adjustment lowers the standard a little further.
Economic growth can build infrastructure. It cannot automatically build character.

If we become wealthier but stop greeting elders, stop offering seats, stop respecting silence, stop yielding to ambulances, tolerate assaults on those who protect us, and accept dishonesty as normal, then our progress is incomplete.

India’s rise is undeniable. The real question is whether we can rise in prosperity without declining in basic decency. Only then will India rise as a truly developed and civil society.

[Lovin Dubai | لوڤن دبي @lovindubai]

Residents are praising delivery riders for continuing to work and being pillars of the community 🙏

vids via @sheila.in.emirate @exquisitebullshiter / TikTok
@MudassirSheikh @971AlSaadi / X

#lovindubai

[Silicon Valley Fodder @Playerinthgame]

it feels like an incredible disservice to this guy that no one ever speaks about what he tried to do

[Aravind @aravind]

I would recommend India's dairy industry to be vigilant, audit and improve safety standards, and monitor chemical adulteration & sabotage. This advise especially goes to @Amul_Coop, given its Gujarat connection and big success in India and abroad.

Reasoning:

Isn't it interesting that right after India rejected both US and EU dairy entry which was pressed on us, some organizations have suddenly, after decades and decades of co-operative milk farming in India, tested their milk to declare there's "high levels" of bacteria in them?

Also, the quality of scare mongering graphics and PR material being shared on SM and whatsapp looks foreign organized propaganda material. Not like it was done by one or two "activist" orgs in India.

But the issue for them is, this scare mongering is bound to fail. Indians have been drinking raw milk and milk coming in half cleaned tankers for decades before. Indians always boil milk and drink. So this campaign will pass.

That's why I'm worried. I feel this is just the trailer. They will try to use the deranged insider front in India, programmed via SM, to physically sabotage at least a batch of milk supplied to Indian dairy industry. It will be tested for cancer causing chemicals and what not.

This will be the real scare to hit - India's dairy industry locally, its exports, the GoI credibility and stability pinning blame on them, and pave the way for imports through public demand. As I always say, when there are more than one mango to be hit with a stone, the adversaries will always act. This fits such a bill.

[Shabnam @ShabnamMenon]

The best possible take on the Who knew What questions floating about now..
If enough people choose to ask these, one could hope to see genuine and sustainable change in what society will choose to venerate..

https://t.co/jOGT8tbhkp

[dominic dyer @domdyer70]

In France, a wonderful initiative is tackling two major issues at once: food waste and animal homelessness! A new project is collecting unused but perfectly good food waste from local markets and transforming it into nutritious meals for homeless pets.

This innovative program not only drastically reduces the amount of food sent to landfills but also provides essential sustenance to countless cats and dogs living on the streets or in shelters. It's a true win-win, offering a sustainable solution that benefits both the environment and vulnerable animals.

Let's applaud these efforts and hope to see similar projects sprout up worldwide, making a difference one meal and one saved life at a time!

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I'm seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.

I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.

Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.

However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right - nay, obligation - to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.

When you've known people since they were ten years old it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn't managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I've repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.

The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's 'all witches' speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through' (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.

Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her 'public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who's identified into the women's prison?

I wasn't a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women's rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.

The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me - a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was - I might never have been this honest.

Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.

[Parveen Kaswan, IFS @ParveenKaswan]

Today on #WorldTourismDay2025. Our simple message.

[Shabnam @ShabnamMenon]

Surely there’s something wrong when the thumbnail of a national daily news video reads like the outro to’Gossip Girl’ #QualityofDiscourse

[Yew's Finest @FinestYew]

The whole stray dogs affair feels like textbook Marxian class warfare.

Almost everyone pro strays is anglophile upper middle class to rich.

Almost everyone anti strays is nativist working, lower middle & middle class.

The segregation is so clean, it's insane.

[Shabnam @ShabnamMenon]

@barandbench Did the judge also explain how one says ‘I love you’ to a MINOR GIRL without sexual intent…???🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️

[Archie Sengupta @archiexzzz]

Today, I heard a very disturbing story about how India's national security is at risk. It came from a friend who recently visited Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

After landing, he checked into a hotel and was speaking with a man at the reception desk. The man, who worked there, asked my friend where he was from. My friend replied that he was from India.

While talking, my friend was trying to figure out the man's accent and asked if he was from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The man laughed and said, "Haha, good catch. Actually, my i am from Peshawar, Pakistan."

Then he said something shocking: "But I have an Indian passport."

Yes, you read that right - and my friend was shocked too. The man went on to explain that since the Malaysian govt/other countries don't offer visa on arrival for Pakistanis and because it's cheaper to get an Indian passport than to bribe Pakistani officials for a visa, he took the Indian route.

At this point, my friend was both scared and shocked. He asked the man, “How did you get an Indian passport if you're a Pakistani?”
The man smiled and replied, “I went to Hyderabad, India, and stayed there for 1 month. I paid 3 lakhs to agents who arranged a job for me abroad along with an Indian passport. Within 1 month, the passport was delivered.”

Just imagine the level of corruption involved. When I applied for my passport recently, it took me 2 months. But here, a Pakistani with a fake address, fake name, and fake documents gets an Indian passport in just 1 month?

This is a serious national security issue. I have no idea what our intelligence agencies are doing, but this is happening right under their nose. The person sitting next to you might not even be Indian but a Pakistani or Bangladeshi.

[Diana Alastair💚🤍💜 ⚢ ❌❌✡️ @sappholives83]

I’m sure you all remember Avery Jackson, the “trans girl” who, at 9, was on the cover of National Geographic. Avery was given the gold standard in gender affirming care: he was chemically castrated and sterilized with “blockers” to hold off male puberty. Nevertheless, he does not pass, and never will.

Now, at age 17, Avery has come out as “nonbinary” — but that’s not the worst part. He also identifies as asexual, meaning that he doesn’t experience sexual attraction.

This is undoubtedly the result of the medication used to delay male puberty; the president of WPATH, Dr, “Marci” Bowers, has said on camera that so-called puberty blockers, which are used to chemically castrate sex offenders, chemically castrate the young boys who take them as well, leaving them incapable of arousal or orgasm.

For adult sex offenders, the process is reversible. For boys like Avery, the effects are permanent. He will never feel sexual attraction, or any of the experiences that accompany it. He is completely sterile; he can never father a child, and his own childhood was spent in the national spotlight. The blockers he was given have also stunted his growth and mental development in irreversible ways. All of these things were stolen from him, and he has said that transitioning “ruined my life.”

It’s high time that we stop pretending that children can make an informed decision to transition or take blockers, even if their doctors are honest about the risks and consequences — which most are not. Blockers are not reversible: the intellectual deficits they cause will never repair themselves, and neither will the damage done to the child victim’s emotional intelligence and maturity. This will, of course, make it easier to push them into transitioning; ie, to sell them hormones and provide surgical alterations.

Parents like Avery’s, who try to monetize their child’s struggles with gender identity, belong in prison, not on television, and so do the doctors who are complicit in his chemical castration and sterilization.

[Sanjeev Sanyal @sanjeevsanyal]

The Nobel Prize for Peace is funded by a family fortune that was made by selling armaments and explosives to all sides in the 19th & 20th century - first to the Russians for Crimean War, then the British and the French, and of course to "neutral" Sweden. It wasn't just "dynamite" but big guns. Alfred Nobel's company still exists - Bofors.

Just saying.....

[Shabnam @ShabnamMenon]

@ananthkrishnan If it does actually turn out that the crash is due to failures in Boeing assembly then the Indian Government should SUE the company on behalf of Air India and the passengers.. unless there is a reckoning they have to face, ALL COMPANIES just wait for things to blow over..

[Ramesh Srivats @rameshsrivats]

After every tragedy, the vultures flock in first.

1. Media vultures - who make things even worse with their shrill sensationalism.
2. Agenda vultures - who never lose an opportunity to heartlessly plug their narrative.
3. Conspiracy vultures - who immediately indulge in baseless speculation to spread hate and fear.
4. Expertise vultures - who profoundly display their shallow knowledge about the issue.
5. Emotional vultures - who exploit the victims and families’ stories & photos to farm some engagement.

Vultures, I tell you. Tragedy is their food and misery is their fuel.